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The American Prospect - articles by authorenThe Politics of Repudiation 1992: Edging Toward Upheavalhttp://www.prospect.org/article/politics-repudiation-1992-edging-toward-upheaval
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<p><font size="+3">F</font>or a generation the United States has experienced a</p>
<p>complex and deepening crisis of its political and economic order. Three pivotal</p>
<p>and highly abnormal electios have punctuated this crisis. In 1968, undermined</p>
<p>by the Vietnam War and the civil rights revolution, the New Deal order</p>
<p>collapsed. A new electoral regime emerged from the ruins, marked by three main</p>
<p>features: normal Republican control of the presidency; divided government as</p>
<p>the (unprecedented) norm; and a candidate-dominated "permanent campaign,"</p>
<p>in which a capital-intensive personalism crowded out labor-intensive political</p>
<p>parties. </p>
<p> In the 1970s, severe economic crisis replaced Vietnam as a driving issue. </p>
<p>Its effects (stagnation and price-inflation coupled with low real interest</p>
<p>rates) were reinforced by signs of foreign policy weakness and the emergence of</p>
<p>the socio-religious right. The stage was set for Ronald Reagan and right-wing "conviction</p>
<p>politics" designed to stop the rot on all fronts. A massive policy</p>
<p>realignment ensued as Reagan and his allies launched their brand of political,</p>
<p>economic, and social revitalization, confident that their new regime was both</p>
<p>viable and durable. </p>
<p> But the 1992 election repudiated that attempted synthesis and its rhetorical,</p>
<p>coalitional, and public-policy regime. Its policy consequences will long outlive</p>
<p>the political order--particularly public debt exceeding 50 percent of the 1992</p>
<p>gross domestic product. Even Republicans agree that the Reagan-Bush era in</p>
<p>American political history is over, mainly because it failed economically. The</p>
<p>promises and dreams of the 1980s were liquidated not only by persistent</p>
<p>recession but by its association with a massive, structural downsizing of</p>
<p>American capitalism. More than any of its postwar predecessors, this recession</p>
<p>has raised acute anxiety within the broad American middle class--anxiety not</p>
<p>just for their own future but for their children's. Average real family income</p>
<p>eroded under George Bush and growth was lower across this presidential term than</p>
<p>in any during the past sixty years. </p>
<p> Considering that two entire political worldviews and regime orders associated</p>
<p>with them had achieved bankruptcy within the space of a dozen years, we should</p>
<p>hardly wonder that public demands for "change" were as loud as they</p>
<p>were unclear or confused. Nor is it surprising that the general political</p>
<p>atmosphere among the electorate in 1992 was so disturbed and filled with rage</p>
<p>against politicians or that for a few weeks in early summer Ross Perot led<i></i></p>
<p>both major-party candidates in the polls. </p>
<p> To a quite unusual extent, 1992 presents a broad panorama of analytic issues</p>
<p>associated with American presidential elections. An incumbent president running</p>
<p>for reelection was defeated, but this was no ordinary defeat. Both his conduct</p>
<p>in office and his defeat at the polls identify for us just what kind of</p>
<p>incumbent George Bush was. Ross Perot, capitalizing on an immense breadth of</p>
<p>public discontent with the existing order and its leadership, won the third</p>
<p>largest share of the total vote ever secured by a nonmajor-party candidate in</p>
<p>American history. Our task here is to attempt to provide a reasonably integrated</p>
<p>account of what happened and why in the pivotal election of 1992. </p>
<p></p><hr /><p></p><h3>THE PERMANENT CAMPAIGN AND THE INTERREGNUM STATE</h3>
<p> Out of the crisis of the 1960s, a genuine critical realignment crystallized,</p>
<p>unlike any in previous history. Its main characteristic was not a shift in</p>
<p>voting preferences but the partial dissolution of the traditional linkages</p>
<p>between elite and public, mediated by the traditional party system. At the</p>
<p>presidential level, the McGovern-Fraser commission reforms led to direct</p>
<p>primaries at the center of the nominating process. This formed a major break</p>
<p>with the past and seemingly energized grass-roots voting participation. But at</p>
<p>almost the same moment, a series of other "reforms" stimulated</p>
<p>political action committees and other forms of political entrepreneurship. These</p>
<p>combined with the rapid growth of campaign technology--polling, focus groups,</p>
<p>targeting, paid ads, and personalist campaigns--to shift the entire system away</p>
<p>from voting participation and toward financial participation. In what Sidney</p>
<p>Blumenthal was the first to call the "permanent campaign,"</p>
<p>congressional incumbents made sure that no reform was undertaken that could give</p>
<p>their challengers an even break, and the money rolled in. </p>
<p> The decline of party in turn led to a decline in the competitiveness of</p>
<p>congressional seats (one sees glimmerings as early as the 1966 congressional</p>
<p>elections). Apart from temporary upticks in 1974 and 1982, this trend continued</p>
<p>from the late 1960s through 1988, a year when incumbents in House races seeking</p>
<p>reelection numbered more than 400 of the 435 members of the House, and their</p>
<p>reelection rate hit 98.5 percent. More generally, as a comparison of</p>
<p>presidential and senatorial election outcomes also clearly demonstrates, for the</p>
<p>first time in American history discrete electoral coalitions--different ones for</p>
<p>different offices--emerged. Thus in 1984 Ronald Reagan was the winner in 375</p>
<p>congressional districts, only 182 of which also elected Republican</p>
<p>representatives. How did incumbents on the Democratic side do so well? It was</p>
<p>easy: All they had to do was run <i>on average</i> 19 percentage points ahead</p>
<p>of Walter Mondale in their districts. </p>
<p> This intersected with the chief,<i> governing</i> feature of this sixth</p>
<p>electoral era,1 which I call the "interregnum state": the<i> divided</i></p>
<p>government that has lately intrigued political scientists. (See Richard</p>
<p>Valelly, "Divided They Govern," <i>TAP</i> Fall 1992.) The critical</p>
<p>realignment of the late 1960s led to a normal Republican majority in</p>
<p>presidential elections--five out of six elections, twenty of twenty-four years</p>
<p>since 1968-69. For six years during this period, a quarter of the time,</p>
<p>Republicans also enjoyed a majority in the U.S. Senate, but never in the House.</p>
<p>The Madisonian separation of powers and its policy-fragmenting implications were</p>
<p>thus reinforced by changed behavior in the electorate; the opposite of what the</p>
<p>traditional party system (at its best) was designed to produce. Instead, by 1989</p>
<p>George Bush entered office with fewer partisan supporters in Congress than any</p>
<p>of his predecessors across two centuries of American politics. </p>
<hr size="1" /><center><br /><a href="/subscribe/"><img src="/tapads/mini_subscribe.gif" border="0" alt="Subscribe to The American Prospect" /></a>
<p></p></center><br /><hr size="1" /><p> The Republican House minority in 1981 was large enough, in conjunction with</p>
<p>Republican control of the Senate, to enact the major features of Ronald Reagan's</p>
<p>tax-and-budget "revolution." But these forces were not strong enough</p>
<p>to permit a complete clinical experiment in squaring the policy circle: cutting</p>
<p>taxes, raising defense spending, and cutting enough outlay elsewhere to keep the</p>
<p>budget deficit from exploding. This was to have long-term political</p>
<p>consequences, not least of which was the Perot candidacy of 1992. On an</p>
<p>increasingly exaggerated scale, divided government produced a bizarre mix of</p>
<p>collusion, collision, and buck-passing in public policy--the very negation of</p>
<p>accountability. </p>
<p> It is no wonder that the first omnibus budget resolution presented to the House</p>
<p>in October 1990, after months of tortuous negotiations among top congressional</p>
<p>and executive leaders, was voted down in a wave of resentment among ordinary</p>
<p>members of Congress who had been cut out of the whole process. It is no wonder</p>
<p>that a key factor in the collapse of public support for George Bush in 1992 was</p>
<p>his repudiation of his 1988 pledge, "Read my lips: No new taxes." It</p>
<p>is no wonder that by 1991, the Kettering Foundation should find extraordinary</p>
<p>levels not of apathy but of anger, rage even, against politics and politicians,</p>
<p>captured so well in E. J. Dionne's <i>Why Americans Hate Politics</i>. Ordinary</p>
<p>Americans, like ordinary members of Congress, strongly resent being dealt out of</p>
<p>a political system that affects their lives while being expected to pick up the</p>
<p>tab or provide the votes. Nor, given all this, is it any wonder that the voters</p>
<p>of all fourteen states that had term-limits proposals on their ballots in</p>
<p>November 1992 approved them. This may be (as I believe) a bad idea whose time is</p>
<p>rapidly coming. But it represents an enduring truth of American politics--that</p>
<p>for every action that closes off the elite world within the Beltway from the</p>
<p>voters outside, there is likely sooner or later to be an equal and opposite</p>
<p>reaction arising from said voters. </p>
<p> Significantly, while surveys throughout the 1980s indicated popular support for</p>
<p>divided government, polls in 1992 showed a swing in attitude: most Americans now</p>
<p>preferred candidates of the same party win the presidency and control Congress</p>
<p>too. In the foreseeable structure of electoral politics, this party can only be</p>
<p>the Democratic Party. It remains to be seen whether its new team can govern</p>
<p>effectively, but for the moment the electorate is giving it the chance. Thus</p>
<p>there is an implicit "race" underway between the willingness of the</p>
<p>voters to entrust government to the Democrats and the current passion for term</p>
<p>limits. The latter is the latest upsurge of a basic idea-set going back to the</p>
<p>Progressive era at the turn of the century: that mechanically imposed,</p>
<p>immaculately conceived structural solutions can work to cure the ills of</p>
<p>American democracy. The former places real contestation at the heart of politics</p>
<p>through parties that are vital and coherent enough to address the problems of</p>
<p>the country. We shall see, across Bill Clinton's term and later, how this race</p>
<p>will be decided in our own time. </p>
<p><font size="+3">F</font>rom 1961 through 1981, the country endured five</p>
<p>aborted presidencies in a row, four of which were repudiations (Johnson, Nixon,</p>
<p>Ford, Carter): a sequence also without historical precedent. Now it has</p>
<p>repudiated yet another. There do appear to be rare occasions in American</p>
<p>political history when a consensus develops that we simply cannot go on like</p>
<p>this any longer, that the impasse in our collective affairs has become</p>
<p>insupportable. Some such consensus crystallized between the extraordinarily</p>
<p>revealing Pennsylvania Senate election of November 1991 and the spring of 1992,</p>
<p>and it was to be fatal to George Bush's bid for reelection. Nor was this a</p>
<p>narrow loss: measured in sheer quantitative terms, George Bush's loss of 15.9</p>
<p>percent of the total vote between his first election and his second was exceeded</p>
<p>only three times in<i> all</i> of American history: In 1932, when Herbert</p>
<p>Hoover's share of the total vote declined 18.6 percent from 1928; in 1800, when</p>
<p>John Adams experienced a decline of 20.4 percent from 1796; and in 1912, when</p>
<p>(with Theodore Roosevelt stealing more than half of the Republican electorate)</p>
<p>William Howard Taft suffered an erosion of 28.4 percent of the total vote from</p>
<p>his 1908 level. Whatever else 1992 may have been, it was a classic case of a</p>
<p>landslide vote of no confidence in an incumbent president and the regime he led.</p>
<p>Of twenty-nine incumbents seeking reelection or election to a full term across</p>
<p>two centuries of American history, in terms of this measure of interelection</p>
<p>swing, George Bush in 1992 ranked twenty-sixth, no mean feat that. </p>
<p> Thus in less than a generation, two whole ways of doing our political business,</p>
<p>interest-group liberalism and now Reaganite capitalism redux, have been swept</p>
<p>into the discard. We should not wonder at the deep sense of rage, bafflement,</p>
<p>and confusion that marked the electoral season of 1992 from New Hampshire in</p>
<p>March to November's final outcome. Can a system experience personal and</p>
<p>structural repudiations of this magnitude, and within very few years, before the</p>
<p>system itself is placed at risk? Some such question lies at the heart of the</p>
<p>remarkable election of 1992. </p>
<p></p><hr /><p></p><h3>BUSH: A THIRD-TERM UNDERSTUDY</h3>
<p> If Jimmy Carter had many of the attributes of a historical accident (as I think</p>
<p>he did), George Bush seems almost a historical inevitability. He is a</p>
<p>near-classic exemplar of a category of presidents extending across political</p>
<p>history--the failed understudy. </p>
<p> In twenty-four of the fifty-two presidential elections held since 1789,</p>
<p>incumbents originally elected to a full term have run to succeed themselves. Of</p>
<p>these, fifteen won, while nine lost their bids for another term. Five of these</p>
<p>losers, along with a narrow winner (Madison in 1812), form a distinct subset.</p>
<p>Each was chosen to carry on the policies of a recently successful and</p>
<p>policy-innovative regime, under conditions where the previous leaders of this</p>
<p>regime are unavailable for an additional term themselves. George Bush is the</p>
<p>first of them in sixty years. These six "understudy" or "conservator"</p>
<p>candidates are: John Adams (Federalist, 1797-1801), succeeding George</p>
<p>Washington; James Madison (Democratic-Republican, 1809-1817), succeeding Thomas</p>
<p>Jefferson; Martin Van Buren (Democrat, 1837-1841), succeeding Andrew Jackson;</p>
<p>William Howard Taft (Republican, 1909-1913), succeeding Theodore Roosevelt;</p>
<p>Herbert Hoover (Republican, 1929-1933), succeeding Calvin Coolidge; and George</p>
<p>Bush succeeding Ronald Reagan. </p>
<p> What else do these men have in common? For one thing, all faced crises that</p>
<p>grew directly out of the policies of their predecessors and their regimes, which</p>
<p>buffeted the understudies' term of office. Second, each of them (with perhaps</p>
<p>the admitted exception of Hoover) succeeded presidents who were regarded as</p>
<p>heroic, charismatic or successful in their own time: acts that were indeed hard</p>
<p>to follow, sorcerers whose apprentice successors would have had to be truly</p>
<p>remarkable to fill the voids left behind. But, third, each of them was selected</p>
<p>precisely to give "four more years" of the same, not to engage in even</p>
<p>timely innovations on any large scale. George Bush, for example, was selected</p>
<p>(and elected) precisely because he was expected to preserve the Reagan legacy in</p>
<p>as nearly pure and undefiled a form as possible. People chosen as understudies,</p>
<p>one may assume, are chosen precisely because they are<i></i></p>
<p>not innovators, and the "vision thing" seems much less of a</p>
<p>problem when the point of the exercise is conservation of the political gains</p>
<p>and commitments secured during the immediate past. </p>
<p> Fourth, each of them came to office replete with exceptional</p>
<p><i>resumes</i>. Adams, Washington's vice president, had been a key intellectual</p>
<p>and actor before the establishment of the constitutional order in 1787. Madison</p>
<p>had been Jefferson's secretary of state, as had Van Buren (in addition to the</p>
<p>latter's additional services as vice president). A superb insider politician who</p>
<p>was a true innovator in building party organization to channel the new mass</p>
<p>electorate, Van Buren had extensive partisan experience as well. Taft had been</p>
<p>selected initially to be governor-general of the newly acquired Philippines, a</p>
<p>job he loved, and subsequently became Theodore Roosevelt's secretary of war. His</p>
<p>is the classic case of being hand-picked by his predecessor to succeed him.</p>
<p>Hoover, with impressive credentials in organizing relief efforts in Belgium and</p>
<p>Russia, served Harding and Coolidge faithfully as secretary of commerce--an</p>
<p>important job in the age of corporatism. George Bush had perhaps the most</p>
<p>glittering <i>resume</i> of all: not only Ronald Reagan's vice president for</p>
<p>eight years, but before that Republican national chairman and (under Gerald</p>
<p>Ford) director of the CIA. </p>
<p> The <i>resumes</i> underscore the integral and basic relationship between the</p>
<p>understudy and the regime he comes to represent. These men were anything but</p>
<p>political outsiders. But they also tended to share a fifth characteristic: As</p>
<p>insiders they not only lacked the common touch but were often perceived at the</p>
<p>time--sometimes even by themselves (Madison and Taft, for example)--as lacking</p>
<p>elemental qualities needed for effective presidential leadership. Each in his</p>
<p>own way was conspicuously vulnerable to attack as elitist, out of touch with the</p>
<p>public, and indifferent to the plight of ordinary Americans--a charge that was</p>
<p>reinforced in most cases by their rigidity and inadaptability. </p>
<p> The sixth and final attribute of these understudies follows: All but Madison</p>
<p>lost their bids for reelection. (He was saved by the unique structural</p>
<p>characteristics of the so-called "first party system" and the</p>
<p>hegemonic position of the Jeffersonian Republican Party in it.) But, Van Buren</p>
<p>apart, these were no ordinary losses. Their share of the total vote from their</p>
<p>first to their second races collapsed by a mean 16.9 percent. This contrasts</p>
<p>with a decline of 6.8 percent for the five other incumbents losing their seats,</p>
<p>and an increase averaging just under 4 percent for the eighteen incumbents</p>
<p>(excluding Madison) who were re-elected. All five of the bottom-swing presidents</p>
<p>(those with the largest losses from their first to their second election) were</p>
<p>third-term understudies. The only other presidents who came close were Gerald</p>
<p>Ford in 1976 (-12.7 percent from Nixon's total in 1972), who had never been</p>
<p>elected nationwide even as vice president, and Jimmy Carter in 1980 (-9.1</p>
<p>percent, as compared with Bush's -15.9 percent in 1992) </p>
<p><font size="+3">T</font>he 1992 Republican campaign was true to context.</p>
<p>Exceptionally clear warning had been given to Bush and his campaign staff by</p>
<p>Harris Wofford's trouncing of Richard Thornburgh in the Pennsylvania Senate race</p>
<p>one year earlier (as Adams and the Federalist elite had been put on clear notice</p>
<p>by the same state's 1799 gubernatorial election). Nothing worthwhile was done in</p>
<p>response, thought many Republicans who were keenly aware of what was going on.</p>
<p>The party convention at Houston, with its dramatic and off-putting stress on</p>
<p>family values and the agenda of the socio-religious right, put its worst foot</p>
<p>forward just as did the 1964 Goldwater convention and the 1972 Democratic</p>
<p>convention that nominated George McGovern. But these had been <i>out-party</i></p>
<p>assemblies; here, in 1992, an<i> in-party</i> was providing a symbolically</p>
<p>similar, off-putting show, something the Republicans had previously avoided even</p>
<p>in the pits of 1932. </p>
<p> Thereafter, anything-but-the-economy --chiefly stressing doubts about Bill</p>
<p>Clinton's character and trustworthiness--became the overriding theme of George</p>
<p>Bush's message to the voters. After all, something similar had worked in 1988,</p>
<p>hadn't it? But in 1992, voters weren't buying, and remarkably, in the second</p>
<p>presidential debate a small number of them in the room forced the thematics back</p>
<p>onto substantive economic issues. It was in this debate, when Bush kept looking</p>
<p>at his watch and stumbled when asked how he personally had been affected by the</p>
<p>recession, that his defects as a candidate were brought home --literally--to</p>
<p>tens of millions of viewers; he was "out of touch" and he "just</p>
<p>didn't get it." In the end, he broke another kind of historic record.</p>
<p>Receiving just 37.5 percent of the total 1992 vote, he ranked twenty-eighth of</p>
<p>the twenty-nine incumbents running for a full term across two centuries. Only</p>
<p>Taft in 1912, with less than half of his party still behind him, and a former</p>
<p>President as the third party candidate, did worse (23.2 percent). Even Hoover in</p>
<p>1932 managed to hold on to 39.6 percent of those voting in that election. </p>
<p></p><hr /><p></p><h3>BILL CLINTON AND THE "NEW DEMOCRATS"</h3>
<p> After the dazzling success of Operation Desert Storm, which pushed Bush's</p>
<p>approval rating to 90 percent, the presumed heavy hitters on the Democratic side</p>
<p>found one reason or another not to present themselves for consideration, and by</p>
<p>very early 1992 a group of secondary candidates had emerged. One of these was</p>
<p>the "obscure" governor of a small and backward state, Bill Clinton of</p>
<p>Arkansas. Now is hardly the time for any kind of extensive review of the entire</p>
<p>campaign, which in any case has already been covered remarkably well by the</p>
<p>print media in the public domain. Through thick and thin, good times and bad,</p>
<p>Clinton--like the Energizer bunny in the TV ads--just kept on going and going</p>
<p>and going. Demolishing his opponents within the party, his successful tactical</p>
<p>choice for the general-election campaign was to take the high road and focus on</p>
<p>what his campaign manager, James Carville, had tacked up in the campaign office:</p>
<p>"The economy, stupid." He had given abundant evidence that he was very</p>
<p>smart, capable of absorbing vast amounts of information and making some sense of</p>
<p>it, gifted (perhaps at times too gifted) with words, and perhaps one of the</p>
<p>really great natural hands-on politicians of our day. All this was not enough to</p>
<p>still persistent public doubts about him (hence one reason for the size of Ross</p>
<p>Perot's vote), or to give the public a clear sense of who the "real"</p>
<p>Bill Clinton was. But it was more than enough to win, especially in the context</p>
<p>we have been describing. </p>
<p> Bill Clinton's rise does represent a real break with the Democratic Party's</p>
<p>past, but the nuances of that break have yet to be defined. When Ross Perot</p>
<p>bowed out of the race on July 16, citing as a reason a "revitalized</p>
<p>Democratic party," he was pointing to a situation in which a candidate less</p>
<p>liberal than the party as a whole (and, except perhaps for Jimmy Carter, than</p>
<p>its previous nominees) had been selected as its standard-bearer. It was no</p>
<p>coincidence that Clinton had been a leading figure in the Democratic Leadership</p>
<p>Council (DLC), an intraparty group whose aim was to move the party and its</p>
<p>choice of nominee toward the center of the American political spectrum. With</p>
<p>old-style interest-group liberalism dead beyond retrieval as a dominant part of</p>
<p>any winning presidential coalition, and with its coffin double-sealed by debt,</p>
<p>deficit, and basic economic-reproduction problems left behind as a prime legacy</p>
<p>of the Reagan-Bush era, the specific 1992 conjuncture was especially favorable</p>
<p>for producing a nominee who could win a presidential election, even though a</p>
<p>Democrat. As usual in such cases, the man and the moment met: Clinton carried</p>
<p>the suburbs, won pluralities in all family-income groups under $75,000 per year,</p>
<p>won the support of far more than half of the Democrats who had voted for Ronald</p>
<p>Reagan in 1984 (69 percent to 31 percent for Bush on a two-party basis), held</p>
<p>Bush to a tie among white voters as a whole, and otherwise enjoyed an</p>
<p>exceptionally broad plurality sweep over the incumbent everywhere except the</p>
<p>South and isolated pockets elsewhere. </p>
<p> Yet the apparent rightward shift is more complex than that advertised by the</p>
<p>DLC. For Clinton believes in activist government, is married to a feminist, and</p>
<p>began his tenure as president-elect by reaffirming his support for gays serving</p>
<p>in the military. Although he made the necessary inroads into the middle class,</p>
<p>he did it without writing off blacks, gays, feminists, greens, or trade</p>
<p>unionists--the dreaded "liberal fundamentalists" in the dismissive</p>
<p>phrase of DLC demonologists William Galston and Elaine Ciulla Kamarck. Indeed,</p>
<p>his support among traditional liberals was about normal, or even better. </p>
<p> The most enduring reality of modern American electoral politics--at least where</p>
<p>economic issues are concerned--is that the Democrats have been the pro-state</p>
<p>party and the Republicans the anti-state party. Clinton and his coalition of</p>
<p>supporters will have as a prime objective the reclamation of this heritage,</p>
<p>while overcoming their image as the party of bureaucracy. Despite the Democratic</p>
<p>Leadership Council's embrace of Clinton and its own resolute centrism,</p>
<p>government once again is to be seen as capable of making positive, indeed</p>
<p>essential, contributions to a twenty-first century American economy in a</p>
<p>thoroughly competitive and interdependent world. </p>
<p> What such a vision has going for it, in truth, is not the clarity of its</p>
<p>program (yet) but simply the force of circumstances, <i>la forza del destino.</i></p>
<p>To remain competitive in the longer run with our economic rivals and to</p>
<p>revitalize the domestic economy and thereby the well-being of the country's</p>
<p>inhabitants and their progeny, some such development of a new role for the state</p>
<p>will be a major part of the price. It could just happen that, with success along</p>
<p>these lines, the older Republican state-as-(necessary?)-evil ideology will</p>
<p>become as <i>passe </i>as the once-sacred doctrines of isolation became in the</p>
<p>1940s and 1950s. But to succeed, Clinton will have to take on sacred</p>
<p>programmatic cows, which could make him enemies in Congress. If he doesn't</p>
<p>redefine a convincing, affirmative role for government, he will not be doing his</p>
<p>job of building the harmonistic political economy that is central to this new</p>
<p>effort to find a way out of crisis and decline. </p>
<p> Clinton of course takes office as a minority president, elected by just 42.9</p>
<p>percent of those who went to the polls. Leaving aside the special case of John</p>
<p>Quincy Adams in the free-for-all of 1824, fifteen of our fifty-two presidential</p>
<p>elections have produced minority winners. Clinton's support ranks third from the</p>
<p>bottom in this category: only Woodrow Wilson in 1912 (41.8 percent) and Abraham</p>
<p>Lincoln in 1860 (39.8 percent) were elected with a narrower base of support.</p>
<p> On the positive side, it is noteworthy that in terms of an elected minority</p>
<p>president's percentage lead over the runner-up, Clinton finishes a robust fourth</p>
<p>out of these fifteen cases (5.5 percent); and if percentages of the electoral</p>
<p>vote are used as a criterion, Clinton (at 68.8 percent) comes in a strong second</p>
<p>only to Wilson in 1912 (81.9 percent). Moreover, Wilson (at least in his first</p>
<p>term) and Lincoln, below him in the share of the vote, had personal qualities</p>
<p>and political contexts favorable to active and highly successful presidencies.</p>
<p>Even Nixon, just above him at 43.4 percent, was both a reasonably strong and</p>
<p>reasonably successful president until ruination set in with the disclosure of</p>
<p>the Watergate affair early in his second term. </p>
<p> However, Clinton, with a considerably smaller working majority in Congress than</p>
<p>they enjoyed, would seem to have far less room for maneuver than Wilson or</p>
<p>Lincoln. The budget deficit will also hem in his programmatic running room, as</p>
<p>will his tightrope act between the old and new Democrats. Clinton has a clear</p>
<p>constitutional mandate. Any more extensive mandate will have to be fought for</p>
<p>and won. </p>
<p></p><hr /><p></p><h3>ALIENATION, TELEVISION, AND PEROT</h3>
<p> Whenever major third entrants appear in presidential elections, they reflect a</p>
<p>breakdown of the system's legitimacy: the greater the share secured by such</p>
<p>candidates, the greater the breakdown. This has happened ten times in American</p>
<p>political history, with twelve cases of significant insurgency (1860 and 1912</p>
<p>produced two significant-insurgency candidacies). With 18.9 percent of the total</p>
<p>vote, Ross Perot finished a strong third among these twelve. Moreover, the other</p>
<p>two cases involved major fragments of organized major parties--Millard Fillmore</p>
<p>and the Whig-Americans of 1856 (21.5 percent) and Theodore Roosevelt and his</p>
<p>Progressive wing of the Republican Party in 1912 (27.4 percent). Perot's showing</p>
<p>is by far the most impressive ever achieved by that other category of third</p>
<p>movements, the pure-outsider or "protest" surge. </p>
<p> The data in the <i>New York Times</i>' early postelection survey makes it</p>
<p>clear that, with few exceptions, Perot's support cut remarkably evenly across</p>
<p>the whole spectrum. Perot was strongest among partisan independents, young men,</p>
<p>liberal Republicans (a chemical trace in a sample these days!), and a few other</p>
<p>categories, and weakest among blacks, Jews, the elderly, and a number of white</p>
<p>Democratic voting groups. Regionally there were important differentials. Perot</p>
<p>was strongest in New England--his best state was Maine, where fully 30.1 percent</p>
<p>voted for him and he edged out Bush for second place--and in the Plains states</p>
<p>and Mountain West. He was weakest in the greater South, except for the</p>
<p>burgeoning states of Texas and Florida. Yet the general impression is that his</p>
<p>appeal cut broadly across most voter categories without (unlike George Wallace</p>
<p>in 1968) being concentrated very heavily in any. At the very end, the <i>USA</i></p>
<p>Today/CNN Gallup poll reported that when Perot voters were asked how they</p>
<p>would have voted if Perot were not in the race, the response was 38 percent for</p>
<p>Clinton, 36 percent for Bush, and 6 percent for "others"; 15 percent</p>
<p>would not have come to the polls and another 5 percent gave no response. So</p>
<p>Perot did not change the outcome. Had he not run, the only notable effect would</p>
<p>have been to reduce the turnout from about 56 percent to 54 percent. As there is</p>
<p>a distinct historic pro-Republican cast to those groups and areas most</p>
<p>penetrated by Perot, this may be one more bit of evidence for our general case</p>
<p>that Bush suffered a vote of no confidence in 1992--though in this hypothetical</p>
<p>exercise no landslide would have been involved. </p>
<p> Perot represents something quite new in American politics: the<i></i></p>
<p>enrage billionaire Lone Ranger who demonstrated a near-perfect appreciation</p>
<p>and use of television to build his following and sell his message. This message</p>
<p>concentrated concretely on that part of the poisonous legacy of the past dozen</p>
<p>years that produced the deficit and a hugely swollen national debt. But in more</p>
<p>general terms, his claim was that the political system as such was broken. In a</p>
<p>real sense, he virtually acted out the script that E.J. Dionne and others had</p>
<p>been writing for some time: it was necessary to transcend the politics of</p>
<p>deadlock and finger-pointing, it was necessary to find some immaculate way of</p>
<p>producing correct policy without traditional politics getting in the way. </p>
<p> The extraordinary breadth of his support across the land reflects at least two</p>
<p>facts of contemporary political life in the U.S. The first of these is the power</p>
<p>of "infomercials" and last-minute TV blitzkrieg backed by unlimited</p>
<p>reserves of money to reach and appeal to "common sense." The second is</p>
<p>the uncanny fit between Perot's general political symbolism and the pervasive</p>
<p>public sense that Washington insiders and powerful interest groups had stolen</p>
<p>the political system from the people. </p>
<p> This candidacy is a warning. It reflects some sort of dialectical acceleration</p>
<p>in the decay of traditional parties and channels of authentic mass political</p>
<p>action, a decay that I and others have discussed with growing alarm for the past</p>
<p>twenty years. Vast numbers of Americans are now poised on the brink of taking a</p>
<p>great leap into the unknown as they seek a savior from endless crises and an</p>
<p>equally endless squeeze on their living standards. More than nineteen million</p>
<p>did so in 1992. We have noted that the Democratic-led version of interest-group</p>
<p>liberalism went bankrupt in 1968, and conclusively in 1980, and that Reaganism</p>
<p>led by the Republicans has achieved bankruptcy in its turn. If the new</p>
<p>state-centered redevelopment synthesis of the Clinton years should fail in its</p>
<p>turn, what then? Virtually nothing readily imaginable would remain in the</p>
<p>repertoire; we would have played out all our options. At that point, one more</p>
<p>heave could do the job: The first completely self-financed candidate in American</p>
<p>history, Ross Perot becomes president after winning the 1996 election. At that</p>
<p>point (if it ever arrives), we will enter an entirely new phase of our political</p>
<p>history. In the wake of 1992, we are measurably closer to it. </p>
<p></p><hr /><p></p><h3>DEMOGRAPHICS AND THE VOTE</h3>
<p> The 1992 election was a repudiation, but not a radical realignment. Elections</p>
<p>are won as a rule by shifts at the margins. Bill Clinton's 53.4 percent of the</p>
<p>two-party vote is impressive under the circumstances, but it was no popular-vote</p>
<p>landslide. And there have been considerably larger two-party swings in our</p>
<p>recent past than the 7 percent pro-Democratic swing that occurred nationally</p>
<p>from 1988 to 1992. The basic long-term demographic patterns within which this</p>
<p>election was decided go back a generation; the overhang from the past is</p>
<p>impressively powerful. Notwithstanding the collapse of both Carter and Bush,</p>
<p>more than three-quarters of the variance in the 1992 distribution of votes can</p>
<p>be explained by the aggregate voter-group preferences in 1976; in terms of basic</p>
<p>voting alignments, not much has changed in sixteen years. When we ask which</p>
<p>groups line up which way, the short answer is that given by Captain Louis</p>
<p>Renault in<i> Casablanca</i>: Round up the usual suspects. Groups (very often</p>
<p>overlapping, of course) that gave Clinton more than 60 percent of the two-party</p>
<p>vote include, in order, blacks (88 percent), Jews (87 percent), voters in the</p>
<p>lowest family-income bracket, less than $15,000 per year (72 percent), Hispanics</p>
<p>(71 percent), members of union households (70 percent), the unemployed (70</p>
<p>percent), voters in the lowest education level, less than completed high school</p>
<p>(66 percent), first-time voters (62 percent), and unmarried voters (60 percent).</p>
<p>At the other end of the distribution are those groups in which Bush prevailed</p>
<p>over Clinton. These include, in order, white voters (49 percent Democratic),</p>
<p>those with a completed college education (49 percent), voters in the medium-high</p>
<p>family-income bracket, $50,000-$74,999 (49 percent), voters in the South (49</p>
<p>percent), white men (47 percent), voters in the top income bracket, $75,000 and</p>
<p>over (43 percent), white Protestants (42 percent), and white born-again</p>
<p>Christians (27 percent). There are very few surprises in either list. The survey</p>
<p>also makes clear that partisanship coupled with ideology forms a far more</p>
<p>powerful long-term continuity factor than demographics. </p>
<p> Even without regard for the moment to the Perot presence in the race, the</p>
<p>differentials in the 1988-1992 swing across voter groups make it clear that Bill</p>
<p>Clinton's strategy of focusing on the economy and targeting his main appeal to</p>
<p>the white middle class was brilliantly successful. This election was above all a</p>
<p>revolt of the moderates, a point which the relative strengths and weaknesses of</p>
<p>Perot's candidacy in the electorate simply underscores. Demographic and</p>
<p>political groups with a two-party Democratic swing of 10 percent or more include</p>
<p>Jews (+22); first-term voters (+14); moderate partisan independents (+12);</p>
<p>members of union households (+12); voters with complete college educations</p>
<p>(+12); voters aged 18-29 (+11); voters with some college education (+11); white</p>
<p>men (+11); partisan independents, as a whole (+10); and moderates, as a whole</p>
<p>(+10). Groups showing the least Democratic swing include liberal Republicans</p>
<p>(-2); blacks (0); Hispanics (+1); liberals (+1); liberal Democrats (+2);</p>
<p>conservative Republicans (+2); conservatives as a whole (+3); Republicans as a</p>
<p>whole (+3); voters with complete high-school educations (+5); and voters with</p>
<p>second lowest family incomes, $15,000-$29,999 (+5). And, according to a</p>
<p><i>USA Today</i> survey, Clinton carried suburban voters over Bush. Among</p>
<p>Democrats voting for Reagan in 1984, their 1992 choice was Clinton, 55 percent;</p>
<p>Bush, 25 percent; and Perot, 20 percent--a two-party Democratic lead of 38</p>
<p>points. Careful readers examining the Democratic percentages in the</p>
<p>most-Republican groups discussed earlier will probably be less impressed by the</p>
<p>expected (their relative ranking) than by the fact that Bush's lead over Clinton</p>
<p>was generally very thin indeed. </p>
<p> With Perot in the race, net voter support for both major-party candidates</p>
<p>declined from the two-party 1988 contest, but Bush's decline was more than five</p>
<p>times as large as was that on the Democratic side (-16 percent versus -3</p>
<p>percent). George Bush lost 29 percent of his 1988 voting base, one of the</p>
<p>largest single-election declines of its sort ever seen. This relative collapse</p>
<p>covers a very wide and remarkably heterogenous list of voter groups, being</p>
<p>notably limited only among blacks (-8 percent) and Hispanics (-17 percent). And</p>
<p>as Perot represented one considerable part of the public's overall judgment that</p>
<p>George Bush had been weighed in the balance and found wanting, so his</p>
<p>last-minute mini-surge reflected another basic reality of 1992: Bill Clinton had</p>
<p>not completely closed his sale of himself as the agent of change from the</p>
<p>rejected<i> status quo</i> of 1992. </p>
<p> Nonetheless, the highest strategic marks should be given to Governor Clinton,</p>
<p>his master tactician James Carville, and other key actors in his campaign. To</p>
<p>win, Clinton had to develop an appeal to "middle America" that recent</p>
<p>Democratic nominees have lacked. He was successful in this, and in distancing</p>
<p>himself from tight relationships with core interest-group liberal</p>
<p>constituencies, yet without disavowing them--a deft balancing act. Ross Perot</p>
<p>helped by drawing from segments of the electorate that might otherwise have</p>
<p>drifted back to George Bush. The strategy was deplored by some urban liberals,</p>
<p>but it may have been the only way through the maze to success in 1992. Despite</p>
<p>his huge 1988-1992 losses, George Bush might very well have won this election</p>
<p>confronted by a less dynamic opponent pursuing a more traditional Democratic</p>
<p>campaign strategy. The key to success lay in capitalizing effectively on the</p>
<p>revolt of the moderates, the preponderant majority of whom had voted for Reagan</p>
<p>and Bush over the past three elections. Even in 1992, this could not have been</p>
<p>done by just any Democratic nominee. </p>
<p></p><hr /><p></p><h3>THE ROBUST REPUBLICANS</h3>
<p> Before the actual returns came in, the question hovered in the air as to</p>
<p>whether this election was another 1932. It wasn't, because the old partisan</p>
<p>voting linkages just aren't there any more and new ones have not been cemented.</p>
<p>Republicans gained nine seats in the House contests and broke even in the Senate</p>
<p>races. By contrast, the Republicans lost eighty-two incumbent congressmen in</p>
<p>1932. In 1860-61, Lincoln's position as a national minority president was much</p>
<p>improved when more than seventy Southern representatives and twenty-one senators</p>
<p>left the union with their states. With FDR, Wilson, and Lincoln, overwhelming</p>
<p>legislative majorities accompanied the new administration into office. This is</p>
<p>not the case this year. If 1992 was a landslide rejection of an incumbent</p>
<p>Republican president, his party was scarcely affected. </p>
<p> This can be read in a variety of ways, of course. Republicans were chagrined</p>
<p>that a "golden," post-reapportionment, post-scandal opportunity had</p>
<p>been lost to make far greater gains than this. There were more open seats in the</p>
<p>House (91) than at any time since the First World War. Considering the levels of</p>
<p>public rage against incumbents the polls had monitored all year, a real</p>
<p>slaughter of sitting Democrats seemed perfectly possible. Turnovers of as many</p>
<p>as 150 House seats were contemplated. The payoff on election day, however, was</p>
<p>surprisingly modest. Thirteen Democratic incumbents were ousted, as were six</p>
<p>Republicans, while another three Democrats and a Republican lost to their</p>
<p>opponents where apportionment forced them to run against each other. As for the</p>
<p>open seats, Democrats won them by a 57-34 margin and partisan switches in this</p>
<p>category canceled each other out. The Republicans' great expectations were once</p>
<p>again dashed; but they were hardly irrational. </p>
<p> Following the civil rights act of 1982, Republicans pursued a very often</p>
<p>successful "aggregation" strategy of drawing districts designed to</p>
<p>elect blacks or Latinos and thus draw off votes on which many white Democrats</p>
<p>had relied for their election. Many of the competitive seats narrowly won by</p>
<p>Democrats in 1992 probably represent "land mines" for the future. Thus</p>
<p>the 176 Republicans in the next Congress represent a situation that, from</p>
<p>Clinton's point of view, could have been worse, and may very well become so</p>
<p>across the 1990s. </p>
<p><font size="+3">T</font>he congressional election was notable on a number</p>
<p>of dimensions. The number of House seats where there was no major-party</p>
<p>opposition plummeted to 29, the lowest number (and proportion) since 1900. The</p>
<p>number and proportion of competitive contests rose to the highest level in</p>
<p>incumbent-held seats in nearly thirty years. Perhaps most notable of all was the</p>
<p>strong pro-Republican vote shift in the South. This produced a situation where,</p>
<p>for the first time in American history, the Democratic share of the</p>
<p>congressional two-party vote was lower in the South (51.9 percent) than it was</p>
<p>outside it (52.9 percent). This region's secular realignment toward the</p>
<p>Republicans, speeded up in 1984 and 1988, is still under way; it has now fully</p>
<p>rejoined the Union, and then some. </p>
<p>Still, despite seeming change, the overall impression is one of remarkable</p>
<p>continuity. This is the more remarkable when one considers the "everything-up-for-grabs"</p>
<p>atmosphere that was reported in the polls and reflected in a good deal of</p>
<p>pre-election analysis. And if I have not spent any great time discussing the</p>
<p>Senate contests, it is because the continuity level is greater still. In the</p>
<p>end, only four incumbents lost their seats (Fowler, D-Ga.; Kasten, R-Wis.;</p>
<p>Sanford, D-N.C.; and Seymour, R-Calif., the latter an appointee). The candidate</p>
<p>domination that is a central theme of the sixth electoral era's "permanent</p>
<p>campaign" remains alive and in fine health in 1992. This is one very strong</p>
<p>reason for believing that while this election ended the Reagan-Bush era, it made</p>
<p>no more than an occasional dent on the relationship between candidates and</p>
<p>voters that so mark this particular era in American history. To the extent that</p>
<p>this is so, the electoral regime set up in and after the critical realignment of</p>
<p>the late 1960s has not yet run its course or been replaced by something</p>
<p>basically different. </p>
<p><font size="+3">I</font>nterest group liberalism, in the sense first used</p>
<p>by the political scientist Theodore Lowi in 1969 as an alliance between</p>
<p>constituent groups and a benevolent state, has faltered because the state no</p>
<p>longer effectively serves the demands of the groups and the groups no longer</p>
<p>provide consistently reliable electoral support for the (Democratic) governing</p>
<p>coalition. Yet at the same time, as the electoral continuities demonstrate, most</p>
<p>of the groups are still there (only organized labor is notably weaker); indeed,</p>
<p>the old interest groups have been joined by several new fervently active</p>
<p>groups--feminists, gays, Hispanics, greens, disabled people, among others. And</p>
<p>most still look, however skeptically, to the Democrats. </p>
<p> However, the state today is far less able than before the year 1968 either to</p>
<p>provide tangible benefits or to broker satisfactory compromises--hence the</p>
<p>frustration and the interregnum. Interest group liberalism as a viable regime</p>
<p>order may be dead, but as the 1990 election data show, the Democratic Party</p>
<p>still depends heavily on a coalition of liberal interest groups, traditional and</p>
<p>new. Indeed, leaving aside the white South, the Clinton coalition of 1992 looks</p>
<p>remarkably like the Roosevelt coalition of 1940. What remains to be seen is</p>
<p>whether Clinton can cement their allegiance, while simultaneously defining a</p>
<p>transcendent national interest, to create a seventh durable electoral era and</p>
<p>governing consensus. </p>
<p></p><hr /><p></p><h3>1992: A SUMMATION</h3>
<p> In this essay, I have sought to locate the broad picture of this election and</p>
<p>its setting in "political time" across American history. This picture</p>
<p>may suggest rather darker colors than the occasion warrants. After all, it had</p>
<p>become clear to American voters early in 1992, as it was clear to me and many</p>
<p>others, that nothing constructive could be expected to happen if George Bush</p>
<p>were reelected. This might not matter at a point where drift could continue a</p>
<p>while longer; it mattered vitally in 1992. Clinton's election, with all the</p>
<p>constraints duly noted, means that something more constructive is a possibility</p>
<p>-- and none too soon. For it is now a close to universal belief among Americans</p>
<p>that time is not on our side. </p>
<p> As Abraham Lincoln famously observed in 1862, "The occasion is piled high</p>
<p>with difficulty. We must think anew and act anew. We must <i>disenthral</i></p>
<p>ourselves, and then we shall save our country." Economists, policy</p>
<p>specialists, and countless others have been hard at work spelling out our own</p>
<p>piled-high difficulties and how they might be constructively addressed. Clearly,</p>
<p>a new start must center on disenthralling ourselves about government's place in</p>
<p>the political economy. This implies a government that can "work" and</p>
<p>especially one that is widely seen to "work," and this in turn will</p>
<p>involve myriad, highly disagreeable, changes in the behavior of Washington's</p>
<p>politicians. Ross Perot's candidacy and the size of his vote are a clear</p>
<p>warning; so more generally was the extremely disturbed state of public opinion</p>
<p>throughout 1992. An exceptional burden is thus added to the inventory of burdens</p>
<p>that poured down on Bill Clinton on November 3. For Clinton may well be the</p>
<p>system's last chance. One suspects that he has already considered this</p>
<p>possibility. And he may just be skillful and lucky enough to succeed in the task</p>
<p>of reconstruction that now begins, by involving--as he must--both Washington</p>
<p>politicians and the public in developing their own personal stake in his</p>
<p>success. </p>
<p><br /><br /><!-- dhandler for print articles --></p></div></div></div>Wed, 19 Dec 2001 19:15:56 +0000141512 at http://www.prospect.orgWalter BurnhamDrift or Mandate?: The 1996 Electionshttp://www.prospect.org/article/drift-or-mandate-1996-elections
<div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"> <p><font class="nonprinting"></font></p>
<p><font size="+2">T</font>he<br />
American political system has been passing through one of its rare bursts of<br />
sweeping convulsive change, culminating thus far in the electoral earthquake of<br />
1994. That midterm election abruptly terminated a reasonably stable<br />
institutional balance, major parts of which had lasted for more than 40 years.<br />
Only five years ago, the Oxford professor of American politics, Byron E. Shafer,<br />
could credibly describe this system in these words: </p>
<blockquote><p>In the current era, the presidency is about foreign policy and<br />
cultural values. The House of Representatives is about social welfare and<br />
service provision. And the Senate is amenable to both concerns, while leaning<br />
toward the latter. There is a conservative majority in the nation . . . on<br />
issues of foreign policy and cultural values, and the presidency is accordingly<br />
Republican. There is a liberal majority in the nation on issues of social<br />
welfare and service provision, and the House of Representatives is accordingly<br />
Democratic. Either majority can reach into the Senate, but the tendency of that<br />
institution to focus more on welfare and services than on foreign relations and<br />
cultural values means that it is more often Democratic than Republican. Yet both<br />
political parties are dedicated to maintaining these arrangements, albeit in<br />
spite of themselves. </p>
<p></p></blockquote>
<p>Few would describe Newt Gingrich's House of Representatives today as being "about<br />
social welfare and service provision." Fewer still would suppose that both<br />
parties "are dedicated to maintaining" the arrangements Shafer<br />
describes. Today it is Congress that is Republican and the presidency that is<br />
Democratic. And in mid-1996, the prospects for Bill Clinton's re-election over<br />
Robert Dole seem remarkably robust. </p>
<p><img />
ALIGN="RIGHT" SRC="../images/27burn1.gif" ALT="Illustration by Taylor Jones" BORDER="0" WIDTH="200"&gt;Reversals<br />
of this magnitude are rare. Occurring suddenly and often unexpectedly, they<br />
scramble previous rational calculations. At such times, it is striking how<br />
rapidly essays among even the best and brightest of us can become period pieces,<br />
guides to what is not happening in politics today. Our task here is to explore<br />
some of these institutional consequences and their implications for 1996 and the<br />
years ahead. </p>
<p>Despite the earthquake of 1994, a basic reality of American public opinion,<br />
noted by Lloyd Free and Albert Cantril in 1967, remains in place. As Free and<br />
Cantril famously observed, Americans tend to be operational liberals and<br />
ideological conservatives. If respondents are asked questions tapping into<br />
general ideological attitudes, notably toward Big Government, the mode (at least<br />
among white, non-Jewish voters) is conservative. Such antistate values have been<br />
embedded in the political culture since the American Revolution. But if<br />
respondents are also asked concrete policy and service-delivery questions, the<br />
mode is liberal. Most of these respondents have wanted collective goodsin<br />
other words, programsthat government began providing in the 1930s, and<br />
that only government could provide. Infuriating to tidy-minded intellectuals of<br />
left or right, this bifurcation into two distinct and potent opinion modes has<br />
shown astonishing tenacity over the years. There is little reason to suppose<br />
that the 1994 election has done away with it. An earlier great realignmentthat<br />
of the 1960sinaugurated a process that polarized the two major parties<br />
along this dimension. Republicans became increasingly the party of ideological<br />
conservatism, with two major "pulses" (Barry Goldwater's nomination in<br />
1964, Ronald Reagan's nomination and election in 1980) mightily accelerating the<br />
process. Democrats were more and more the program-creating, service-delivery<br />
party of operational liberalism. This, connected with the structural<br />
transformation of the parties themselves and the emergence of candidate-centered<br />
campaigning, produced the unprecedented institutional specialization that Shafer<br />
and others have described. </p>
<p>The most significant structural feature of the post-1968 regime-order was<br />
the emergence of divided government as a normal state of affairs. The policy<br />
consequences of this development were monumentalmost dramatically the<br />
quadrupling of the national debt within a dozen years, creating a cumulative<br />
barricade against further development of the programs central to operational<br />
liberalism. As Gary C. Jacobson observed in his penetrating analysis of the 1992<br />
congressional elections, </p>
<blockquote><p>Divided government in the Reagan-Bush years emerged from the<br />
electorate's unwitting attempt to have its cake and eat it too. Poll after poll<br />
taken during the 1980s and early 1990s found solid majorities in favor of an<br />
imposing combination of low taxes, generous social spending, and a balanced<br />
budget. It is hardly surprising that, given a choice, people would declare<br />
themselves for benefits and against costs. The surprise is that electoral<br />
politics in this era gave them the option of voting simultaneously for<br />
Democratic congresses so they could receive the benefits they enjoyed, and<br />
Republican presidents so they would not have to pay for them. </p>
<p></p></blockquote>
<p>It is unsurprising that this formula proved politically unsustainable.<br />
Another theme central to this story is a constitutional one developed with<br />
particular clarity by Yale legal scholar Bruce Ackerman in his 1991 book, <i>We<br />
the People</i>. American history, according to Ackerman, has been punctuated by<br />
three "constitutional moments," those of the Founding (the 1780s),<br />
Recon struction (the 1860s), and the New Deal (the 1930s). Each of these latter<br />
events so substantially reshaped the operational meaning of the document of 1787<br />
that it created in effect a new "American republic." But, as we shall<br />
see, very special conditions must be met before such moments can be said to<br />
occur: Just as there can be failed critical realignments, so it is also possible<br />
to have aborted constitutional moments. </p>
<p><font size="+2">T</font>he<br />
Republicans of the 104th Congress see themselves as having a forceful mandate "direct<br />
from the people" to produce another such constitutional moment. The goal is<br />
the substantial dismantling of the strong federal government created and given<br />
judicial sanction in the 1930sthe creation of a fourth republic on the<br />
ruins of the third. In 1994-96 this thrust produced a number of concrete policy<br />
initiatives, including not only the Republican budget and Contract with America<br />
but also Supreme Court decisions that rediscovered virtues in pre-1937<br />
jurisprudence long thought to be extinct. Thus, it is not for nothing that<br />
Republican presidential candidate Dole has been advising people to take out<br />
copies of the Tenth Amendment and re-read it. </p>
<p>As we all know, much of this initial transformative push was halted in its<br />
tracks by President Clinton's use of the veto power. Confusion ensued in<br />
Republican ranks; they were forced to resort to a coercive strategyshutting<br />
down the government, threatening default on payments on the national debtthat<br />
clearly backfired. Acutely polarized stalemate dominates the institutional<br />
scene, while opinion negatives both for House Speaker Gingrich and the<br />
Republican Party generally have climbed considerably. </p>
<hr size="1" /><center><br /><a href="/subscribe/"><img src="/tapads/mini_subscribe.gif" border="0" alt="Subscribe to The American Prospect" /></a>
<p></p></center><br /><hr size="1" /><p>The failure of the congressional Republicans to consolidate their gains<br />
nicely confirms Ackerman's insight. As our history demonstrates, constitutional<br />
"revolutions" in American politics require what he calls "extended<br />
deliberation." Those who propose a constitutional revolution cannot achieve<br />
their goals by winning only a single election. Repeated victory is required, for<br />
the Constitution itself stands as a great breakwater against parliamentary<br />
decision-making. </p>
<p><img />
ALIGN="LEFT" SRC="../images/27burn2.gif" ALT="Illustration by Taylor Jones" BORDER="0" WIDTH="200"&gt;Perhaps<br />
it was assumed by the new majority's leadership that the President would go<br />
along with their republic-changing program, or that he could somehow be<br />
steamrolled. But the Constitution prescribes fixed terms of office, and the full<br />
use of their power by officeholdersincluding presidentsuntil the<br />
moment when they are replaced by others. So much for elementary Government 101,<br />
enriched by Professor Ackerman's important gloss. After a prolonged feint in the<br />
direction of acquiescence, Clinton in the end did not go along, andunlike<br />
the very rare situations under Andrew Johnson (1866-69) and Harry Truman<br />
(1947-48)the votes were not there to override most vetoes. The failure of<br />
the government-shutting campaign during the winter of 1995-96 also demonstrated<br />
that the President could not be steamrolled. Out of this stalemated situation a<br />
rare bipartisan consensus emerged; subsequent developments would have to await<br />
the results of the 1996 elections. The issues at stake make these elections of<br />
enormous substantive importance quite apart from the candidates. Before dealing<br />
more fully with 1996, it is worth considering what seems likely to surviveto<br />
be a durable part of a newer political orderregardless of whether Clinton<br />
or Dole wins in November. </p>
<p><font size="+2">M</font>ost<br />
likely to endure is the partisan polarization of Congress. <i>Con gressional<br />
Quarterly</i>'s surveys of 1995 roll calls document a story that became clear<br />
almost from the moment the 104th Congress assembled. In 1995 the percentage of<br />
total recorded votes in which a majority of one party was opposed to a majority<br />
of the other climbed smartly to 73.2 in the House and 68.8 in the Senate. Both<br />
are all-time highs in a series that extends back to 1954. Indeed, as Texas A&amp;M<br />
political scientist Patricia Hurley has pointed out, if these levels of<br />
partisanship hold up for the whole of the 104th Congress, they will mean a<br />
degree of partisan polarization not seen since 1909-11 in the House and 1921-23<br />
in the Senate. </p>
<p>To realize how far upward we have come, it is worthy of note that an<br />
all-time low was reached as late as 1968-7027 percent in the House, 32<br />
percent in the Senate. Even in the first half of George Bush's administration<br />
(1989-90), the partisan-vote scores reached only 49 percent and 35 percent<br />
respectively in the House and the Senate. It is also notable that extensive<br />
rules changes were adopted in the House. Centralized decision power is now<br />
vested in the majority leadership to a degree not seen since Speaker Joseph<br />
Cannon's wings were clipped in the St. Patrick's Day revolt of 1910. </p>
<p>In part, the quasi-parliamentary situation in the 1995 Congress is the<br />
culmination (so far) of longer-term processes by which each party has<br />
progressively lost its deviant tailliberal Republicans, conservative Demo<br />
crats. The party unity average scores (for both chambers) compiled by <i>Congressional<br />
Quarterly </i>reveal a 15-year trend toward only slightly elevated levels on the<br />
Republican side (1975-90), but a conspicuous rise among Democrats in the early<br />
1980sundoubtedly in response to the challenge of a Reagan presidency. From<br />
then through 1993, indeed, Democratic legislative cohesion in Congress usually<br />
exceeded the GOP's. It is in the 1990seven before the 104th Congressthat<br />
this Republican cohesion dramatically im proved, from 74 percent in 1990 to 83<br />
percent in 1994. The process of Republican consolidation was virtually completed<br />
in 1995, with a score of 91 percent; the Democratic score, on the other hand,<br />
fell modestly to 80 percent. </p>
<p>There are various ways of presenting this picture. One-third of the 148<br />
white Democrats, a little more than one-fifth of all Democrats, but only 1<br />
percent of the 236 Republicans, voted with their party less than three-quarters<br />
of the time; for the House as a whole, the figure in the center is only 10.8<br />
percent (47 out of 434 members, excluding the Speaker). On the Republican side,<br />
only 9 of 236 members followed the party line less than 80 percent of the time.<br />
Still, the lowest scorer, Representative Constance Morella, Republican of<br />
Maryland, gave it a 65 percent support. She and eight of the other low scorers<br />
came from the former bastion of moderate Republicanism, the Northeast. Even so,<br />
37 of the 45 GOP representatives from this regionthe other four-fifthslined<br />
up with the party majority at least 80 percent of the time. </p>
<p>The younger the entering cohort, the more its members tend to cohere behind<br />
the GOP party majority (no such trend seems to exist on the Democratic side):<br />
78.6 percent of Republican members elected before 1992 supported the party<br />
majority on these partisan roll calls at least 90 percent of the time. The score<br />
for the 1992 sophomore class rises modestly to 80; and for the notable freshman<br />
class of 1994, to a more impressive 85.9 percent. And barely less than half of<br />
the House GOP consists of members elected in 1992 or later, while even among the<br />
Democrats three-eighths of the party are freshmen or sophomores. So much for<br />
term limits! </p>
<p>Among white Democrats, there is substantially less cohesion than among<br />
Republicans, but considerably more than prior to 1995. A chief feature of the<br />
story here is, of course, a long-term secular trend toward Republican<br />
legislative strength in the South, through either defeat of conservative white<br />
southern Democrats or capture of open seats vacated by them. Here the Republican<br />
trend was decisively accelerated in 1994. A 1992 Democratic regional lead of 33<br />
(85-52, including Kentucky and Oklahoma in the South) was replaced by a<br />
Republican lead of 9 following the 1994 election (64-73). This is the first such<br />
outcome since the initial Reconstruction elections of 1868-69. The Republican<br />
lead was then expanded by the defection of 5 sitting conservative southern<br />
Democrats in 1995, increasing the regional Republican lead to 19. In the 104th<br />
House of Representatives, only 38 white southern Democrats remained, along with<br />
17 African Americans and 4 Hispanics. And outright pro-Republican deviants on<br />
the <i>CQ</i> party unity score numbered just 6 of these 38. </p>
<p><font size="+2">T</font>he<br />
implications of this continuing and accelerating southern realignment toward the<br />
GOP are far-reaching. Having now thoroughly spread to the level of congressional<br />
elections, the effects of this shift are also likely to be permanentas<br />
will be the generally high level of Republican legislative cohesion. In fact,<br />
there is every reason to suppose that this surge has not yet fully run its<br />
course. Another Republican gain of half a dozen southern open seats, perhaps<br />
more, seems quite likely in 1996. This points toward major difficulties for<br />
Democrats attempting to regain control of the House this year, for a recapture<br />
of virtually all the non-southern seats lost in 1994 would produce at best only<br />
the barest of party majorities. There was a mean Democratic lead of 81 in the<br />
whole House between 1980 and 1992. Nearly half of this lead was produced by a<br />
southern margin of 39. With anything approaching a 39-seat Republican lead in<br />
the South, the Democrats must do as well elsewhere in the country as they<br />
typically did before 1994 just to break even. </p>
<p>Evidently, we are well on the road to a goal ardently desired by generations<br />
of political scientists and other critical observers of American politicsa<br />
responsible party system with sharply defined differences between the two major<br />
contestants. To the extent that congressional elections now provide a normal<br />
condition of closely balanced and sharply polarized legislative parties, the<br />
centripetal force of intraparty cohesion will likely be intensified, and the<br />
issue distance between the two contestants maximized. To this extent and on this<br />
dimension, realignment has already occurred. Whether liberals of the<br />
party-responsibility school will be happy with the consequences of its<br />
achievement may well be debated. </p>
<p>Whence this surge toward this explosively polarized world? Two factors<br />
deserve special note. First, this decade has been marked by a vast boiling over<br />
of public wrath directed against established parties, politicians, and policies.<br />
Fundamental to this development has been long-term stagnation or decline of real<br />
income among widening segments of the electorate. Equally fundamental are the<br />
social effects of the current burst of capitalist revolutiondownsizing,<br />
job termination, and job substitution from better to less well paid. The result<br />
is a pervasive anxiety for the future of oneself and one's children. Established<br />
politicians of both parties, including Presidents Bush and Clinton, have seemed<br />
caught in the grip of surging economic forces that they cannot controland,<br />
what is worse, forces that no one wishes to discuss, much less come to terms<br />
with. The theology of the market is firmly in the ascendant, from economics<br />
departments to radio talk show hosts. Stress abounds, but democratic politics as<br />
a means of coping with it seems increasingly excluded in practice. </p>
<p>The search for answers thus feeds into a politics of repudiation with much<br />
attention being paid to candidates at the fringes of politics who promise<br />
answers: thus Ross Perot in 1992, and Patrick Buchanan in the Republican<br />
contests of early 1996. One good rule of politics is that when a vacuum of this<br />
sort comes along, entrepreneurs will come along to exploit, and if possible,<br />
fill it. The more disturbed the sense of loss of control over individual and<br />
family destiny becomes, the greater the impact of these entrepreneurs is likely<br />
to be. </p>
<p><font size="+2">B</font>ut<br />
there is more to the story. The distancing effect, alienating large parts of the<br />
public from politics and politicians, grows directly out of fundamental changes<br />
in the parties as institutions that occurred in and after the critical<br />
realignment of the late 1960s. John Aldrich's recent analysis (<i>Why Parties?</i>)<br />
of the transition from the old cadre parties that go back to Martin Van Buren's<br />
time to newer "parties-in-service" to candidates is particularly<br />
relevant. Linked to these changes, in Aldrich's analysis, is a fundamental shift<br />
in the identity of major benefit seekers closely associated with party<br />
operations. The older "labor-intensive" parties were densely populated<br />
with people chiefly interested in divisible material benefitsjobs,<br />
patronage, and the like. The mode of operations is well captured in the title of<br />
a book by Milton Rakove on Chicago's Daley machine: "We don't want nobody<br />
nobody sent." Candidates as well as others worked their passage within a<br />
tightly organized structure of action. The newer "capital-intensive"<br />
parties, on the other hand, became increasingly populated with a second type of<br />
benefit seeker. Typically more upscale and better educated than their<br />
predecessors, these were people who were primarily interested in policies and<br />
party as only a means to achieving the policy goals they favored. Closely linked<br />
with this new type of benefit seeker is much greater receptivity to broader<br />
political ideology. And, as Alan Ehrenhalt has recently noted, the answer to the<br />
question, "Who sent these candidates?" is "They sent themselves." </p>
<p>You can't do policy in any authoritative sense without getting elected.<br />
Candidates in this newer world must first deal with the party-nomination<br />
process, where policy and ideological activists are particularly thick on the<br />
ground. But candidates recognize that somewhere close to the center is where<br />
elections are usually won or lostthough ascertaining where that center is<br />
in an electorate with two opinion modes is no simple task. Thus Richard Nixon<br />
could once advise Senator Dole to run to the right to get the Republican<br />
nomination, and then run back again to the center during the general-election<br />
campaign. (It will be interesting to see whether, or to what extent, Dole<br />
follows that advice in 1996.) </p>
<p>The activist pull on candidates away from the center and toward their own<br />
more polar policy-ideological agendas has grown systematically more intense,<br />
particularly since 1980. Sometimes the activists themselves directly enter and<br />
win an important election as candidates, as was the case in 1994 with Senator<br />
Spencer Abraham, Republican of Michigan. The 1994 Republican freshman class<br />
seems particularly populated with members who had no prior legislative<br />
experience (26 out of 73) and no experience with the local activist network more<br />
generally. </p>
<p>All this produces a severe and evidently growing dissonance between what the<br />
campaign producers offer and what much of the consuming voting public seems to<br />
want. If one adds this dissonance to the sociological implications of shifting<br />
upscale from Type I to Type II activists of Aldrich's analysis, the public<br />
dislikesome would call it hatredof politics becomes much easier to<br />
understand. It is very doubtful that many voters care either about saving whales<br />
or about product liability reform. They tend to want practical solutions to very<br />
practical and important problems they encounter in their lives. </p>
<p>At the same time, the disappearance of lift-all-boats economic growth and a<br />
pervasive public sense of eclipse of traditional values ordering society have<br />
contributed to a search for ways to escape the impasse. The party of ideological<br />
conservatism provided one set of ways in 1994. The party of operational<br />
liberalism had very little to offer in response. Programs no longer seemed<br />
enough, and the Democratic congressional establishment was effectively targeted<br />
as corrupt, self-interested, and out of touch. But the mismatch between a<br />
relatively centrist-bent electorate and a new crop of polar ideological<br />
politicians and benefit seekers has by no means been reduced thereby. The rise<br />
of the Republican congressional mountain has in fact made it much more acute<br />
than ever. </p>
<p><font size="+2">T</font>he<br />
context for November involves a continuing, exceptional fluidity and high<br />
negative charge in electoral opinion and voting behavior. This has clearly not<br />
subsided since 1994. In early 1995, President Clinton was limited to insisting<br />
that he was still politically relevant. In early 1996, a steep decline in<br />
support for the Republican Congress and his apparent lead over Republican<br />
nominee-designate Robert Dole has permitted him to achieve some real ascendancyso<br />
farin the 1996 sweepstakes. </p>
<p>Evidence of this fluidity includes the eruption of Patrick Buchanan's<br />
economic-populist candidacy early in the season. In Illinois, the thoroughly<br />
party-endorsed Republican lieutenant governor lost the GOP Senate nomination to<br />
an obscure and far-right state legislator. The mainstream state leadership in<br />
Illinois has always tended toward a more moderate-centrist kind of major<br />
candidate than have many other such organizations, but this time to no avail. In<br />
Texas's 14th District, ex-Democrat Greg Laughlin was defeated for renomination<br />
by former representative and former Libertarian Party presidential candidate Ron<br />
Paul in a runoff, despite monolithic national and state GOP leadership support.<br />
On the Democratic side, in Texas, meanwhile, a completely unknown schoolteacher<br />
named Victor Morales defeated Representative John Bryant of Dallas, a solid<br />
liberal who also had unified party-leadership support behind him. </p>
<p>Surveys in mid-1996 imply that the more voters have learned about the<br />
details of the Republican program in Congress, the more support for the party<br />
and for Congress vis-à-vis the President has declined. Moreover, in 1994,<br />
71.5 million Americans voted for members of the House of Representatives: The<br />
Republican revolution rests squarely upon the support of exactly one-fifth of<br />
the potential electorate. Turnout is always much higher in presidential years<br />
than in off years. This year we will inescapably have an extremely<br />
issue-polarized campaign, which we can expect to provide a special stimulus to<br />
turnout. Additionally, the 1993 Motor Voter Act, opposed to the bitter end by<br />
the congressional GOP, will add more millions to the total. We could have a<br />
total turnout of 115-120 million in 1996, perhaps even more. Will this<br />
much-expanded 1996 electorate make a real difference to the outcome? It just<br />
might. </p>
<p><font size="+2">V</font>iewed<br />
in institutional-control terms, and assuming that no third entrant wins the<br />
presidential election, the 1996 election consists of eight possibilities. Two of<br />
these involve unified partisan control of the presidency and Congress. The other<br />
six various outcomes are those in which one major-party presidential candidate<br />
wins while the opposition gains or keeps control of one or both houses of<br />
Congress. Three of these eight represent a cluster of most likely results, so<br />
far as one can determine: (1) Clinton wins while Republicans maintain control of<br />
both houses of Congress; (2) Clinton wins while Republicans hold on to the<br />
Senate but lose the House; (3) Dole wins while Republicans maintain control of<br />
both houses of Congress. </p>
<p>Either of the first two scenarios would clearly frustrate Ackerman's<br />
extended-deliberation condition as requisite for producing a "constitutional<br />
moment." One would thus have a failed moment to analyze and an aborted<br />
realignment to deal with. Needless to say, a Democratic capture of all three<br />
institutions (a less likely fourth scenario) would emphatically underscore such<br />
conclusions: Far from being a realignment signal, 1994 would appear comparable<br />
to a 1946, as 1996 would be comparable to a 1948. In that case, the Republican<br />
revolution would have been stopped dead in its tracks. But even barring that,<br />
and particularly under the second scenario (Democratic presidential and House<br />
victories), the net forward thrust of the Revolution would surely have been<br />
crippled. </p>
<p>This looks strikingly like the pre-1994 order, but with horse and rider<br />
having changed places. A great many Americans may well back a second term for<br />
President Clinton as a means of imposing a check on a Republican Congress,<br />
reinforcing the arguments of some scholars that divided government of yesteryear<br />
was in substantial part the deliberate choice of critical minorities of voters<br />
to block unified party control in Washington. But the character of divided<br />
government now, as we have seen in 1995-96, is basically different from what it<br />
was then. Particularly under the first scenario, but to some extent under the<br />
second scenario as well, the President, other politicians, and the country would<br />
now be condemned to a particularly virulent politics of deadlock. Republican<br />
majorities could be rationally expected to hamstring both the President and<br />
bureaucracy to the utmost limits of human ingenuity. In short, if you liked<br />
1995-96 as an exercise in government, you'll just love 1997-98. </p>
<p>The earlier order, as Professor Shafer observes, rested upon parties that<br />
were committed to the then-existing divided-government arrangements. In practice<br />
this meant that congressional Democrats and Presidents Reagan and Bush, despite<br />
their profound policy disagreements, operated under a certain normative<br />
constraint. At the end of the day the King's government had to be carried on.<br />
When this limit dissolves, as it did virtually the moment the 104th Congress<br />
assembled, our complex constitutional structure seizes up. There is little<br />
enough reason to suppose that a continuation of 1994's institutional outcome<br />
would make congressional Republicans much more accommodating in a 105th Congress<br />
they controlled. The implications for policy and public legitimacy alike are not<br />
cheery ones. They raise the most profound questions about whether the political<br />
crisis has reached the point where proliferation of ideologically polarized<br />
interests has made the country practically ungovernable. </p>
<p>About the third scenarioan across-the-board Republican victoryrather<br />
less needs to be said. In that event, a very strong presumptive case could be<br />
made for the fulfillment of Ackerman's extended-deliberation condition for<br />
producing a "constitutional moment," especially considering that a<br />
much-enlarged electorate would have ratified the 1994 decision. A President Dole<br />
would presumably have two chief domestic functions: first, to make the<br />
appropriate conservative Supreme Court appointments, as he has already promised<br />
to do; and second, to sign whatever Congress sends up to him. Naturally, like<br />
all presidents, a President Dole would have a will and purposes of his own. But<br />
there is very little in his recent record that shows that this will or these<br />
purposes would pose major problems for the realization of most of the Republican<br />
agenda. In that case, we not only stand at the threshold of a quite new regime<br />
order but, what is more, a fourth American Republic largely based on liquidating<br />
the legacy of the third. </p>
<p>As they all know, liberals in 1996 fight on relatively unpromising terrain.<br />
Much of the institutional and policy landslide that has unfolded across the<br />
1990s seems unlikely to be reversed in any near term. After all, we have it on<br />
President Clinton's own authority that "the age of big government is over."<br />
There is an obvious worldwide trend toward the hegemony both of the ideology and<br />
the practice of the market in organizing human society and allocating resources<br />
within it. The Keynesian world of yesteryear is long past. There is no room for<br />
it, and thus declining room for state decisional autonomy or much of traditional<br />
democratic politics, in a global environment marked by increasing<br />
interpenetration of the "commanding heights" of capitalism. To be<br />
sure, the United States has been a leader in developments on this front, in<br />
large part because the country has never had an organized left in electoral<br />
politics, and because the organized trade-union movement is a husk of its former<br />
self. And here, to a degree not readily found elsewhere, the political right is<br />
united behind a vision of society defined in terms of households, markets, and,<br />
of course, churches. On the opposing side, a chief long-term mission must be to<br />
develop an analysis that finds a credible role both for the <i>res publica</i><br />
and for democracy to perform, and this must involve some organized challenge to<br />
the hegemony of market theology. </p>
<p><font size="+2">B</font>ut<br />
in the shorter term, there is no reason to draw the conclusion that the American<br />
people must settle for the truncation of the national government that the right<br />
has in view. It makes a world of practical difference which of our scenarios<br />
prevails. For the Democrats, reactivating the power of the public's<br />
operational-liberal preferences is a key to success; andas the pollster<br />
Stanley Greenberg has pointed out at great length and with much documentationthis<br />
certainly involves placing a credible economic-issue story at the center of the<br />
campaign agenda. To judge from the apparent state of public opinion regarding<br />
candidates, parties, issues, and agendas in the spring of 1996, there seems<br />
quite a bit of material to work with in framing such an effort. Big as the<br />
problems of this extended political crisis are, this pivotal election is<br />
obviously winnable by either side. It will at the end probably hang on which of<br />
the two contenders' stories is believed by the median voter. Beyond that, one<br />
should follow Napoleon's advice: <i>On s'engage, et puis on voit</i>first<br />
commit yourself and then see what happens. </p>
<p></p><center><i><font size="-1">Illustration by Taylor Jones</font></i></center>
<p><br /><br /><!-- dhandler for print articles --></p></div></div></div>Wed, 19 Dec 2001 19:08:06 +0000141222 at http://www.prospect.orgWalter Burnham